A Surge in Township Employees and Property Taxes Until recently Ive been largely indifferent to township affairs and

assumed those elected would do what is best for the residents. Like many Montclair residents, my focus was on pressing work and family obligations, but the near-tripling in our property taxes over the past two decades with no discernible increase in services has finally caught my attention. Along with other residents, we are now trying to keep a closer eye on township affairs including Essex County and Board of Education expenses. Our current mayor is proposing a Master Plan to pursue elusive net revenue through development, yet his plan does not contain any analysis of its financial impact on Montclairs current residents. We believe the proposed Master Development Plan will inevitably lead to continued sharp increases in our property taxes. The only explanation for the surge in all of our property taxes in the past two decades has been a more than tripling in our net spending. Because labor costs represent the preponderance of our aggregate expenses, the surge in spending must be primarily due to the hiring of an everincreasing number of employees, employees receiving ever-increasing salaries and benefits, or some combination of the two. As such, it is self-evident that the townships leadership need to principally focus on improving the cost-effectiveness with which education, county and township services are provided in order to ensure the townships long-term viability. Yet our current town leadership, instead of focusing primarily on this admittedly very difficult work, is instead unconstructively pursuing residential building construction throughout Montclair (aka the Master Plan) as a solution to our persistent over-spending. If youd like to better understand or participate in addressing the key financial and quality-of-life issues our town faces, please contact us at MontclairFinanceStudyGroup@gmail.com Martin Gonzales Montclair